Posted by kcden on 10/17/2012 8:10:00 AM (view original):This, in fact, is a terrible idea. Why should the free agent market be set to the minimum possible dollar amount for each and every free agent? It will be either that or someone fixing the market as damag suggested on page 1.
tufft if you don't see that no player would ever get "overpaid" with your "fix" and don't see that that is a bad thing, then there really is no use in anyone going back and forth with you over this.

You're obsessing on one point and ignoring others. And your one point is just wrong.

Bidding wars will still happen. Which will drive up FA salaries. Players will still be overpaid by your standards (and I guess we can assume that we'll have you around to tell us all what is & is not overpaid.)

There are several auction models. The ones that last maximize bidding, which maximizes the price, over many auctions over a long period of time. These make the sellers the most money. Meaning the highest price.

There are reasons not to go with the eBay model. But that it will keep FA prices very low is not one of them. There's a real world out there you can check in with at any time.

Posted by MikeT23 on 10/17/2012 8:15:00 AM (view original):If I could "fix" FA, I'd allow everyone two bids. You make your first, you're top bid or you're not. If not, you can make one more. If you are, you can make one more if someone exceeds your bid.

No need to check in every cycle every day. Determine a player's worth and make an offer. Don't sit around and bid 10k more, time and time again, until you figure out the top bid.

FWIW, I'd do the same thing with IFA and coaches(or completely overhaul coach hiring but that's another story).

That's called a blind auction.

You could look up how & why it works the way it does. How that style of auction effects bidding & prices. But I know you won't.

It would take less game time than the current system. Good on that.

IMO, it this would not be the best model for FA bidding in HBD.

You would get wild swings in FA contracts. I think it would be even easier for less experienced GMs to pay too much, and thus loose interest in that team or the game. Retention is a problem in HBD. Changes to improve retention would be good changes, IMO.

It would reduce the average FA contract. I know that because if this style maximized the price, eBay would use it. Since less experienced GMs would probably do most of the over bidding, and the average contract wold be lower, that would mean more experience owners would be more of the good deals. Introducing yet more unbalance into the game.

Bidding is more fun to more people. So taking out bidding would reduce the fun of the game to most people.

There are ways to bid that take a lot of time, and ways that take less time. The way HBD does it takes a lot of time. I think that's bad and could be changed.

Posted by tufft on 10/17/2012 1:05:00 PM (view original):>> So when do the players sign? Again, be brief. <<

After 36 hours with the same top bidder. Maybe it's 24 hours. Maybe 48.

So you put in your eBay bid at 7 AM and go to work. I come in at 7:10 AM and bid repeatedly until I beat your offer. Then I wait to see if he'll sign before 7 PM when you'll check in again?

Yeah, that doesn't benefit the guy that sits at a computer all day at all.

The person who puts in more time will always have advantages. The big problem with the current system is the person who can put in a lot of time, and who knows the tricks, like what 1/2 cycle things happen, has a HUGE advantage over people who can put less time. Changes could be made to keep HBD a strategy game and require less time to play & compete.

I think HBD would be in less trouble if the FA system allowed the GM who can check in every 24-48 hours to compete more evenly with people like you, who are in the game 16-20 hours a day, 365 days a year.

To your point - You didn't make one. Do you know that it's only 12 hours between 7 AM & 7 PM? Not 24-48.

Is it really so hard for you to think for just a minute before you type? Or will you just admit you like systems that benefit you, even if those system keep a lot of other people who would like the game & be good at it away?

And as I told you, you squeeze so much that is wrong into just a few lines, it takes a bit of typing to cover all of it.

I'm not typing to you. Nobody is going to change your mind about anything. I'm typing to the guys working on a new baseball simulation. i think some of my ideas might make for a more viable game.

HBD is dying. I don't expect Fox to try to save it. Eventually you'll be in one of a few remaining HBD worlds with you pals, and Fox will decide they have to charge you $200 a season, or they'll pull the plug on the server.

Posted by damag on 10/17/2012 8:56:00 AM (view original):First of all, I thought of a couple of other exploits that would make real time bidding horrible.

I could collude with another owner. Make sure he gets any player he wants by cockblocking any other bidders, finding out the real price, and letting my client know.

Or I could collude with myself. Get two teams in one world, use my dummy team to fix the price on players, then buy them with my real team. No telltale sketchy trades or waiver dumps.

Huh?

If you could collude with someone else like that, how come you're not doing it on eBay right now? Are you making millions fixing the price on valuable items and selling the later?

If you have 2 teams in the same world, there are a whole lot of ways you could cheat. One of them is NOT using one team to fix a price on an FA. All you could do was drive up a price. How is that helping your other team?

I don't particularly care what it's called(or what you call it). It solves the problem of "Lots of time" vs "Limited time".

Similar to what damag said earlier, I could sit here and bid on every FA I'm interested in. Find the high bid, back out and bid on another until I find the "best buy". How is that not ridiculously more advantageous to me than the current system?

>> Insisting that the eBay model of proxy bidding would somehow make HBD FA bidding better is ludicrous. It makes no sense to me how a system in which I can make a bid of, for example, $20m on a player, and end up signing him for $7.1m, makes the game better. That REMOVES strategy, not improves strategy. It takes away risk. Without risk, there is little to no strategy. <<

I already explained how & why HBD could be better if it saved GMs from spending $13M more for a player than anyone else. Better for retention. Better not to have to fill screwed up teams whose owner has left them. Real world data proves you get more active auctions and higher bids with that model (more action = more fun. Higher bids not necessarily good.)

The strategies could change, but to say there would be no strategy is just silly. Can't argue that point. It's just so far crazy it's beyond reasonable debate.

You seem to disagree with me on the potential benefits. I can't argue that. Difference of opinion.

Posted by kcden on 10/17/2012 8:10:00 AM (view original):This, in fact, is a terrible idea. Why should the free agent market be set to the minimum possible dollar amount for each and every free agent? It will be either that or someone fixing the market as damag suggested on page 1.
tufft if you don't see that no player would ever get "overpaid" with your "fix" and don't see that that is a bad thing, then there really is no use in anyone going back and forth with you over this.

You're obsessing on one point and ignoring others. And your one point is just wrong.

Bidding wars will still happen. Which will drive up FA salaries. Players will still be overpaid by your standards (and I guess we can assume that we'll have you around to tell us all what is & is not overpaid.)

There are several auction models. The ones that last maximize bidding, which maximizes the price, over many auctions over a long period of time. These make the sellers the most money. Meaning the highest price.

There are reasons not to go with the eBay model. But that it will keep FA prices very low is not one of them. There's a real world out there you can check in with at any time.

Somebody doesn't understand how HBD bidding works.
In your model, if I set my max bid for a player at a max contract, I am going to pay exactly the minimum increment over the next highest bidder. That works to have every single player sign for the absolute minimum they could ever possibly sign for, based on the market.
In the current HBD model, if I offer a player what he asks for and find out I am behind, I need to decide how much I might be behind and how much I would be willing to spend. If only one coach thinks he was worth 7 mill per year when he was asking for 5, but I decide the guy is probably going to go for 9 mill a year and he is worth it to me, I offer him 9 mill a year, and eventually sign him at ~1.9 mill per year more than I could have and would have signed him at in your model.
The only times the two models will converge and a player will for certain not be "overpaid" is when there are multiple max contract offers and when there is only one offer, at the minimum the player is asking.

Posted by tufft on 10/17/2012 1:05:00 PM (view original):>> So when do the players sign? Again, be brief. <<

After 36 hours with the same top bidder. Maybe it's 24 hours. Maybe 48.

So you put in your eBay bid at 7 AM and go to work. I come in at 7:10 AM and bid repeatedly until I beat your offer. Then I wait to see if he'll sign before 7 PM when you'll check in again?

Yeah, that doesn't benefit the guy that sits at a computer all day at all.

The person who puts in more time will always have advantages. The big problem with the current system is the person who can put in a lot of time, and who knows the tricks, like what 1/2 cycle things happen, has a HUGE advantage over people who can put less time. Changes could be made to keep HBD a strategy game and require less time to play & compete.

I think HBD would be in less trouble if the FA system allowed the GM who can check in every 24-48 hours to compete more evenly with people like you, who are in the game 16-20 hours a day, 365 days a year.

To your point - You didn't make one. Do you know that it's only 12 hours between 7 AM & 7 PM? Not 24-48.

Is it really so hard for you to think for just a minute before you type? Or will you just admit you like systems that benefit you, even if those system keep a lot of other people who would like the game & be good at it away?

There is no way of telling or predicting on which 1/2 cycle any particular FA will sign.

I'm not sure why you think that more experienced owners have some sort of advantage over less experienced owners in that respect. A guy could sign on the first cycle (the 3am cycle 24 hours after FA starts), he could sign on the last cycle (the 7pm cycle on the last day of FA), or he could sign anywhere in-between.